sfwomen020_mac.jpg SF Fire chief Joanne Hayes-White, San Francisco Port Director, Monique Moyer and SF Police Chief Heather Fong. Gavin Newsom's cabinet features a record number of women with high profile ... more

Photo: Michael Macor

The Women in Charge / San Francisco leads the nation with female appointees

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San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom says he doesn't try to create history, it just happens when he does what he thinks is right.

Earlier this year, he made international headlines for attempting to legalize gay marriage, saying it was a matter of equal rights. The state's highest court didn't buy it and overturned the practice.

More recently, and more quietly, he has made history again, with a handful of key appointments that could also be viewed through the lens of equal rights -- though no court will overrule him this time.

San Francisco, or more correctly, the mayor, has put women in charge of six major public safety departments in the city. There are more women in charge of agencies that deal with life-and-death emergencies here than in any other major metropolitan city in the nation.

Terrorism on the waterfront? A woman runs the port. Anthrax in the mail? The medical examiner is a woman. Earthquake-caused fires? The Hetch Hetchy water system fails? Riots in the streets? Women, women, women in charge.

Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle, New York and Los Angeles, to name a few, have no women heading up high-profile public safety jobs. There are women in a variety of management positions ranging from chief of staff and commerce director in Philadelphia to the director of the board of ethics and animal control in Chicago to the chief operation office and city attorney in Atlanta (where a woman, Shirley Franklin, is mayor).

The only major metropolitan areas in the nation with a female police chief are Boston, Milwaukee, Detroit and San Francisco. (Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith was elected to her post in 1998 and re-elected in 2002.) There are a few small cities in the nation with female fire chiefs, but San Francisco is the largest urban fire department in the world headed by a woman, according to an article in the industry journal Fire Chief that appeared online earlier this year.

In San Francisco, apart from initial headlines about the police and fire chief, the news is often greeted with no more than a yawn.

Perhaps, some suggest, the Bay Area is such a progressive and liberal mecca that the gains women have made during the past generation are now taken for granted. The state's two U.S. senators are women who hail from the Bay Area. Of the 53 members in the state's congressional delegation, 18 are women. Six of them are from the Bay Area, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, arguably one of the most powerful women in the world.

But to gauge how unusual this is on a national level, consider the story Newsom tells about his experiences at the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

"After I had appointed the fire chief, I had more mayors ask, 'How are you getting away with this?" he recalled. "I said, 'What do you mean?' and they said, 'We couldn't get away with this.' " A few months later, at the next quarterly meeting, after he had appointed a female police chief, several mayors approached him again. "Now you're making us look bad," they told him. "We're getting pressure."

The mayor, an entrepreneur who started 11 businesses in his pre- government career, including the PlumpJack winery and hotel, said he was not looking to "challenge the norm" or to make San Francisco a model for the nation, but to staff the city the way he would a private industry. He had also, in his inaugural address, made a commitment to diversity and change in city government.

"All of them are competent people who have demonstrated accomplishments over time," Newsom said. "My criteria were, 'Would I hire this person in my private life? Would I recommend them to any businessperson around town?

"I don't know who else I could have picked," Newsom said. "I don't exclude men -- I just picked Jose Cisneros as city treasurer. ... When I ask for resumes, I don't say, 'Send me only women.' I'm looking for the best choice."

To Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the sheer number of women in public safety management is a marker of how far women have come since she entered politics in the late 1960s.

When she ran for the Board of Supervisors, influential city fathers advised her against it, she recalled, saying that there was only one "woman's seat" on the board -- and it was already occupied. But she won a seat, and as the top vote-getter in the election she was automatically to be made president of the board, according to the practice of the day. Conventional wisdom was that she should step aside and let a senior colleague, John Barbagelata -- the fourth-highest vote-getter -- take charge because he was a man. (She didn't.) Feinstein also happened to be president of the board at the time of Mayor George Moscone's assassination, and stepped in to fill out his term. She was elected mayor twice after that, and appointed women where she could along the way, including Mary Callanan as treasurer, Louise Renne as city attorney and Willie Kennedy as supervisor.

"I do think I started it," Feinstein said of the trend toward more women in management, "and it's very important, because once you open the door and you cross the threshold, the door's open for all time.

"People really have to be conscious that there still is a glass ceiling. The key is, women can work their way up. It's not that this is an instant gift. It's that if you work hard, you're credible, you have good judgment, good character and people see you're effective, you can go to top."

Pelosi, another political pioneer, said the appointments are a new step forward for trend-setting San Francisco.

"It's fabulous, because these are positions that are not soft positions - - they're of the utmost seriousness," Pelosi said. "When you take an oath of office, everyone takes an oath to defend the Constitution. Implicit in that is the public safety, and everything springs from that -- health, education, economic security. The fundamentals of public safety are a primary responsibility, and to have women in those roles is really again leading the way for the country."

Others suggest the real landmark is that some people don't consider this a landmark at all.

Delaine Eastin, former state superintendent of public instruction, thinks that view is wrong.

"I think this is as big a deal as when (Barbara) Boxer and Feinstein got elected," said Eastin, now a professor of education at Mills College in Oakland. "Women have come legions in the last 40 years, but to say that everything is equitable now and we can all do all the jobs, when this is the first time in the history of the U.S. that one city has women in all these positions, that's of historical note."

"As far as we track, San Francisco is the only place where this has happened," Moore said.

The 37-year-old mayor said the appointments were based on talent, but his age may have had something to do with his decisions, as might his upbringing.

"Part of it's generational -- he is of their generation," said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Cal State Sacramento. "All of them are old enough to have come in under affirmative action, but they've doggedly pursued their careers step by step. It's not as if he reached down to get them and pull them up. They were ready to be there. He was courageous enough to see that and do it. To end up with all women is quite a feat."

His parents, Tessa and Judge Bill Newsom, divorced when he was young. His father believed in women's equality and the judge's sisters were strong women as well, a family friend said. Gavin Newsom and his sister, Hilary, lived with their mother, who worked three jobs and whose mantra was "don't explain, don't complain," the mayor said. Hilary Newsom Callan is an executive in the PlumpJack business. His wife, lawyer Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom, is following a career path that has taken her to New York City, where she lives much of the time and is an energetic, opinionated commentator on Court TV.

Newsom, who has been described as a bit of a policy wonk, pays attention to trends and futurists. He likes to cite the fact that he has read "EVE- olution, The Eight Truths of Marketing to Women," by futurist Faith Popcorn, and that he modified his business practices as an entrepreneur to better suit women. The reason was largely economic -- women represent a large slice of American purchasing power -- so he changed the music, colors, lighting, bedsheets and even installed softer toilet paper at PlumpJack Squaw Valley.

When he gives high school commencement addresses, he talks about the cumulative power of women in the United States and the world, and tells the boys, "This is the end of the world as you know it, so look around." The girls whoop, he said, and although the guys laugh, "They get it."

Newsom said the changes to PlumpJack helped the company "dramatically." He is now seeking to put some of those operational techniques to use in city government, noting, for example, that the city is planning to conduct a gender equity analysis of boys' recreation programs compared to that of girls, looking at the ratio of boys to girls using city services, the ratio of male and female coaches, and the amount of funding allocated to programs for each gender.

In politics, women are rarely viewed as corrupt insiders. With the reputations of several public safety departments tarnished by embarrassing scandals, Newsom's decision to put women in charge may have been a way of addressing the problems. It may have been a conscious political maneuver, too: An influx of new faces might just help to distance Newsom from the troubles associated with the pals of former Mayor Willie Brown.

"Voters often view women as outsiders, as reformers, and we've dubbed this 'the virtue advantage,' " said political consultant Mary Hughes, of Staton-Hughes in San Francisco, which has conducted research on women gubernatorial candidates since 1998 for the Barbara Lee Family Foundation in Boston.

In Arizona in 1998, women were elected to five statewide offices -- governor, secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer and superintendent of public instruction in one fell swoop. A governor had been impeached in 1988, and the governor in 1997, Fife Symington, was convicted of seven felony counts of bank and wire fraud, which were overturned and followed by a presidential pardon.

Debbie Walsh of the Center for Women in Politics at Rutgers University said that Arizona has a strong history of electing women, but in this case, voters cast ballots for women because "they thought they would do things differently than the guys who were there before, and the reason they think that is because people think and believe that women operate differently than men do when they are in power -- that is what our research shows."

Many of San Francisco's public safety departments have been dogged by problems in recent years.

{bull} The San Francisco Police Department had been criticized in recent years for its poor crime-solving statistics. In 2002, Police Chief Earl Sanders and Assistant Police Chief Alex Fagan Sr. were under brief indictment for allegedly conspiring to obstruct the investigation into a November 2002 brawl involving Assistant Chief Alex Fagan's rookie officer son and two other off-duty officers. The three were later charged with allegedly assaulting two young men in a fight that began over a bag of steak fajitas. Fagan Sr. later became head of the Office of Emergency Services, but stepped down following a shouting match between himself and his son in an Arizona bar.

{bull} The Fire Department had long-standing problems with drinking on the job, harassment of paramedics and weak leadership, all of which were blasted in a grand jury report in June.

{bull} The port came under fire after an independent audit this year showed it was losing millions of dollars to irregular deals with developers, laxity in rent collection and other things.

{bull} The Public Utilities Commission, which manages sewers and the water and power service driven by the Hetch Hetchy water system, which dates back to the 1900s and is vulnerable to breakdowns, has also come under criticism by state lawmakers and suburban customers. Lawmakers have indicated an interest in taking over its management. Suburban water customers in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda counties are unsure that the agency is the proper steward of the system. The PUC has been criticized for letting the city take $600 million in revenues while the system has fallen into disrepair, and also for overcharging suburban water customers, leading to skepticism that the agency can properly handle the $3.6 billion upgrade planned for completion in 2016.

Managers in those departments said they are already taking steps to reorganize, institute new procedures to improve on-the-job performance standards and customer service, and to lay long-range plans for the future.

It may be ironic that women are now seen as positive forces for change, given that they had to fight their way -- through landmark legal battles that required the hiring of minorities and women -- into the departments they now manage.

In 1975, the Police Department was under federal court order to open the ranks to women as part of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by racial minorities to integrate the force. At the time, there were a handful of women on the force, but they were classified as "policewomen," and were permitted to work on juvenile crimes and sex cases only. The order was lifted in 1998. A federal court mandated an integration plan for the Fire Department in 1988 that set affirmative-action goals for women and minority firefighters. At the time, there were four African Americans and a total of 120 other members of minorities in its ranks, but no women. In 1994 the court revisited the matter by naming a prominent African American consultant and city commissioner to push the city into fully complying. The order was lifted in 1997. All but one of the departments is dominated by a male workforce, and the Police and Fire departments are the most lopsided, with women totaling 13 percent of the uniformed workforce in the Fire Department and 16.5 percent of the uniformed officers in the Police Department. In contrast, three-quarters of the staff at the Office of Emergency Services is female.

The real question is whether it will make a difference that women are in charge, rather than men. Much has been made of the collaborative nature of women in the workplace, but with the appointments so recently made, it is difficult to measure what kind of impact -- based on gender -- the new department heads are having, if any.

In politics, women often bring a different approach to management. State Sen. Jackie Speier, who has spent years in the state Legislature, has watched men and women chair various committees and thinks there are gender differences in how they perform.

"You see this in the Legislature all the time -- and there are exceptions -- but women are driven by policy and not by politics," Speier said. "For some men it's a war game. It's a game of strategy to win."

The differences have been widely written about, she noted, most recently in Tom Peters' recent book, "Re-Imagine!"

"It observes that the CEOs of today and tomorrow will be very different from the CEO of yesterday, in part because of the influence of women and their leadership style," she said. "It's more collaborative, less top down, less command-and-control. Women are more willing to accept someone else's ideas because it is someone else's idea."

In Congress, women are likelier than their male counterparts to spend more time representing women's interests, across party lines, as well as increasing the ability of women and traditionally disadvantaged groups to have access to their legislators, research by the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University has shown.

"When you ask about specific public policies, they tend to be more liberal than men," said Walsh, the center's director, "and we find that women legislators, whether Democrats or Republicans, are more likely than male legislators of either party to work on legislation specifically intended to benefit women."

In policing, a 2002 study on gender gaps in the use of excessive force conducted by the National Center for Women & Policing found that female officers are less likely to use excessive force than their male counterparts, which translates into fewer dollars spent on lawsuit settlements. The research suggested that less excessive force could build community trust and cooperation with police.

Moore, the center's director, said it is too early to tell what type of changes the female police chiefs could have on their departments.

"It's not a situation that comes up often enough to be able to study it - - we have nothing to compare it to," Moore said. "Policing has resisted the contributions women can make. We have really yet to reap the benefits of true gender balancing."

If any of the rank and file hold resentment about a female boss, it has yet to be spoken about publicly. A prominent former San Francisco police officer said that the Police Department, much like any company, has a contingent of employees who complain about management at any given time, but that the gender of the chief was unlikely to be an issue for the relatively young staff, 50 percent of whom have fewer than 10 years on the job.

In the Fire Department, Union President John Hanley said that if there is any problem with the chief, it is budget cuts that are making it a difficult department to run, and not her gender.

"It's good to have her -- she brings a different perspective to the table," Hanley said. "I've dealt with a lot of chiefs, and I have yet to have a chief ask me how my family is. Joanne asks you. It creates a family bond that the administration truly cares about the people that she is charge of, totally cares, not in a phony way, but in a real way. She's concerned about the job. She is not concerned about moving up. We've had people who were concerned about punching the ticket and going somewhere else. She's a tough Irish chick, in a good positive way. She's a good keeper."

San Francisco's mayor said it has been his experience that women work more cooperatively than men, are more focused and efficient with their time, multi-task better and, most importantly, do not let their egos get in the way of their work.

Newsom said results are already showing, with the cross-training of the Police, Fire and public health departments -- for the first time in city history -- on issues related to weapons of mass destruction.

"When it comes to the security of the city, I want people who get things done and are accountable, and who will also work together and check their egos at the door," Newsom said. "I've noticed women have a much easier time telling me the way things are than men. They cut through the chitchat, the facade is removed. We get down to what's really happening."

Newsom shifts in his chair and leans forward for a moment. "Look at Angela Alioto and Susan Leal," he said, naming two candidates who ran against him in the mayoral race of 2003. He subsequently named Alioto to head a committee to end chronic homelessness in San Francisco, and Leal accepted his offer to run the PUC.

THE DEPARTMENT HEADS

Heather Fong, a San Francisco native, had worked various street and command positions in the Police Department. She was seen as steady, calm and apolitical while filling in as assistant police chief as departmental indictments were being sorted out. Her decision to draft a long-term plan for the Police Department and begin putting it into effect while Newsom sought a permanent chief is reportedly what won him over.

In a brief interview, Fong repeated what she has often said about her rise : "The key is being effective and doing your job." She never saw being a woman as a barrier to getting the chief's job. "I didn't aspire to it, so I didn't think about it," said Fong, who also has a master's degree in social work.

Her interpersonal communication style is tight and controlled, but not unfriendly. Fong, who is tall, slim and single, does not come across like a woman trying to be a man. And she wears a uniform every day to set a tone of professionalism.

"I have had officers coming in saying, 'I feel like I have to act this way,' " she said. "I said, don't change yourself to be a police officer. If we wanted clones, we'd have clones. We hire them as people -- it's their talent, skills, compassion for people that we want."

As the first woman police chief in the department's history, Fong's focus is on the huge responsibility that comes with being a reluctant pioneer. "I do feel pressure -- to the department, to myself, and to the mayor," she acknowledged.

Joanne Hayes-White had worked in every fire station in the city, moving up quickly from commander, to assistant deputy chief, and for the past two years, director of training, responsible for educating hundreds of new firefighters. When she was sworn in, her husband and three sons attended the ceremony. It wasn't until Riley, 10, saw a story about her in Scholastic News that he realized her being chief was a big deal, she said with a laugh.

The tall, strapping Hayes-White holds a degree in business from Santa Clara University. She has a competitive air, and had the chief's job in the back of her mind during her 14 years on the job.

After college, she worked a human resources job in the private sector before learning that the fire department was looking for women. Her parents weren't thrilled, but she joined anyway, and built relationships on various assignments by being unafraid to ask questions and soak up information. "I knew coming into the job it wasn't going to be a bed of roses," she said. "If you show you're genuinely interested, people will want to assist."

In 1996, when Hayes-White was promoted to captain, she saw the administrative side of the department, which meshed well with her business background. She likes that she knows 80 percent of the department staff by name. She also talks about her Irish temperament with pride. She has a handshake that stops just short of bone-crushing, and an outgoing, congenial manner. She, like Fong, wears a full uniform every day. She also frequently talks with Fong about interagency matters, but said they don't call each other for support. "I'm not nervous about being the first woman chief," she said. "I do feel like I'm in a fishbowl a lot -- everyone's looking because it's the first [appointment] of its kind. I don't associate anything negative with that."

Monique Moyer worked as an investment banker from 1987 to 1996, and joined the city's staff as finance director for the port in 1996. She was quickly recruited to work for the mayor's office of public finance in 1997, where she remained until appointed by Newsom to clean financial house at the port.

The investment banking world, like that of the police and fire departments, is male-dominated. Moyer quickly learned that to be on the trading floor, she would have to act like a man to be successful -- "vulgar language, sexist remarks, a lot of bravado," she said. She chose the banking side instead, "where women had a better foothold," she said, "but not much. The women I knew who were successful, that I worked with, were very brash, used the f-word, and got into fights regularly."

When Moyer came to city government, she found a tremendous number of women, and when given the choice, hired women to her staff. One reason, she said, is that men gravitate to the securities industry, where salaries are higher, whereas women are willing to work in jobs that offer a better working environment for less money. In a government job, "You're altruistic," she said. "But the hours -- I don't work any fewer hours than I would have worked as an investment banker."

Before being elected city treasurer in 1997, a position she left to head the PUC, Susan Leal helped to create a successful health care company and also served on the Board of Supervisors. Leal, who lives with a partner in San Francisco, knows women have come far in politics, but sees herself as a pioneer in the ranks of executive management.

"If you ask teenagers, as I did, 'How many of you believe there could be a woman president in the next 20 years?' not one hand went up," said Leal. "It was at a group of 16-year-olds who were at a women's leadership group last year. I said, 'You've made a big statement -- people don't believe women can be executives, other than human resource and library managers, and those are still very tough positions, don't kid yourself. But they still don't think women can be executives, so we help break the mold."

AnneMarie Conroy, a lawyer and former supervisor who also served as the development director of Treasure Island, was tapped to head the Office of Emergency Services. Newsom said he was confident she had an array of contacts within the city (having worked previously with many of the department heads), had knowledge of the Police and Fire department cultures, and, most importantly, she could get them to coordinate and work together.

It doesn't hurt that Conroy and the fire chief are lifelong friends, having been born two days apart in the same hospital. Conroy has a bond with Fong as well: both attended St. Rose Academy.

Conroy was on the police commission when she pinned Fong with a captain's star. Conroy's grandfather and father served in the Police Department; 40 years ago, when her father was 40, he held the same job she does today. Back then, it was called the Disaster Corps. Back then, it was assumed women couldn't handle the responsibility. Conroy, who is married but has no children, likes to point out that today, she's the one who answers the red telephone connected to the mayor's office and home residence.

It has only been during the past 10 years that she has seen women advancing in the workplace, she recalled that early in her law career, she was mistaken for a secretary simply because she was a woman. "I was walking down the hall at the office and a man -- an opposing counsel -- came out of a room and asked if I could make copies," she said. "I said I'd be happy to do it for $250 an hour."

She counts among her role models her parents, as well as Judge Ina Gyemant, and state Sen. Jackie Speier. But she is the one who has to make the decisions when it comes to managing $100 million in federal grants for Homeland Security, and for coordinating cross-training with the police and fire departments. "The magnitude of the responsibility," she said, "is very heavy at times."

Newsom said he was assured by outgoing Chief Medical Examiner Boyd Stephens that Dr. Amy Hart is "one of the best and brightest" and that the department is "a national model." Hart, who preferred to answer interview questions in writing, said she never considered being a woman a barrier to entering the field.

Hart, who is 49 and married, with two grown children, considers herself a pioneer as the first Eurasian woman to be chief medical examiner in the nation, to the best of her knowledge. That's where the rah-rah ends. "I think," she wrote, "this is a natural progression due to more women entering the medical profession, especially the medical subspecialty of forensic pathology."